The Crack in the Golden Egg

Seeing Karkaroff give an eight, Harry said with some emotion, "He finally gave a high score! I thought he was going to give another four!"

Draco frowned and said disdainfully, "Four doubled to eight..."

"Just look at his expression... Karkaroff must be feeling awful about giving that score."

Harry strongly agreed with Draco and nodded. "That really is the case..."

After their earlier conversations, Cedric, Draco, and Harry had learned from the champions of the other schools how they had scored in the first task.

When scoring the champions from other schools, most of the judges, including Seraphina Picquery, gave relatively fair scores;

As long as a champion completed the task, their score ranged from seven to nine;

Even if they failed to complete the task, they would still receive a five or six;

There were cases of favoritism as well. For example, although Ilvermorny had failed to complete the trial, Seraphina Picquery had still awarded them a high score of nine;

In fact, Madame Maxime and Headmaster Kamba also gave the champions from their own schools high scores of nine;

Harry and the others could understand that, though. After all, they were champions from their own schools. A little personal bias was perfectly normal.

Since most of the judges were relatively fair, there were naturally a small number of judges who were completely unfair—namely, Karkaroff;

When scoring champions from other schools, Karkaroff's standards were exceptionally harsh. For instance, Uagadou, Beauxbatons, and Hogwarts had all completed the trial, yet he had given them only four points;

Ilvermorny's champion had failed to complete the trial, so Karkaroff naturally deducted points. As a result, Ilvermorny's champion had received an extremely low score of just two from him;

But when it came to Durmstrang's champion failing the trial, Karkaroff's scoring standards suddenly changed.